The Blacklist 2×01 “Lord Baltimore” Review

The moment we’ve all waited for since the last episode of the first season of The Blacklist has finally arrived. Red. Is. Back.

Set roughly two months after Berlin’s dramatic arrival to wreak havoc on Red Reddington (James Spader), Agent Liz Keen (Megan Boone) and everyone on the FBI Task Force, we find Red in the middle of acquiring his first real lead in his search for Berlin’s identity. In true Red fashion, everything starts with flare and a bang.

After a wild opening car chase through the Cameroon jungle to the atmospheric blare of ZZ Top’s La Grange, Red twists his apparent capture at the hands of a “tin-pot dictator” into learning that Lord Baltimore (No. 104) has been hired by Berlin to hunt Red down.

Red brings his lead to Liz. Lord Baltimore is a legend in Big Data lore for using vast amounts of online information to find his targets. Liz, living out of a hotel and on edge, isn’t the same smiling spirit we saw at the beginning of Season 1. Her life has been turned upside down. But in typical Red fashion, he gets her to focus on the task at hand—finding Lord Baltimore who may point them to Berlin.

Clever investigative work by Aram (Amir Arison), Liz and Agent Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) introduces us to Rowan Mills (Krysten Ritter), a data engineer who seems mysteriously stalked by someone working hard to make her appear a likely suspect of leaked information. The team also learns that Rowan is the surviving sibling of a deceased twin, Norah that had pressured her sister to leak information to no avail.

Zeroing in on Lord Baltimore’s data mining methods reveals to the team he isn’t looking for Red at all, but rather a woman that fits a certain set of criteria. Out of several hundred candidates Red picks one instantly, Naomi Hyland (Mary Louise Parker), the woman who used to be his wife.

Before the team can secure Naomi, she is ambushed and taken captive by the real Lord Baltimore, Norah Mills. Attempting to flee, Norah is captured and the team pieces together that Norah has been hiding in plain sight all along—as her sister. Not an intended deception, but rather a split personality created by the traumatic murder of Rowan and triggered by her handler.

As the episode comes to a close, Berlin finally reaches out to Red with the twisted news that he plans to send Naomi back to Red piece by piece, starting with a finger delivered to Red’s hotel.

In a final scene, we see a hooded figure that has been watching Liz throughout the episode. No clue is given whom it may be, save a pair of glasses snatched from view. Who is Liz’s mysterious voyeur and are they connected to Berlin’s plan to exact brutal revenge on Red?

Aren’t you a saucy minx

Interrupting the investigation midstream is the dramatic capture of Red by Mossad Spy Tamar Katzman (Mozhan Marno). In a hail of gunfire, smoke and a dramatic chopper entrance overhead, Red is taken captive right under the nose of Dembe (Hisham Tawfiq) who is left holding only Red’s hat for his trouble.

At first believing that Lord Baltimore has taken him captive, Red quickly pieces together Tamar’s true identity after hearing her dismiss her guards and glancing at her tattoo—all while still tied to a chair. The dialogue between these two sizzles and it’s almost as if you can feel the subtext dripping over almost everything said.

Seemingly impressed Tamar listens as Red slips into his usual bold self telling her that the person she just reported to will have him released within the hour.

“Aren’t we confident today,” comments Tamar with a sly smile.

“I’m confident every day,” replies Red with an equally cheeky smile in return.

Red recounts how her brother was killed in an attack and though Red is quick to dismiss his involvement, she reacts with curiosity and asks him quite directly how did he know.

“I know everything about the people who are tasked with finding me.”

In this moment, Red plays the confident card of one in the know, but we all know this statement isn’t 100% true. After all, Berlin has been after him for years and only by drawing Berlin out has Red managed to even get a whiff at who his most notorious adversary may be.

After she reports his capture, Red is indeed released to FBI custody, but not before a spicy exchange with Tamar. He offers to give her the name of the man she is truly looking for instead of Red, but she dismisses him—she already knows.

The catch being that this man disappeared mysteriously. “Did he,” deadpan’s Red before he walks away. It would seem that he might indeed know. Maybe he was even the one who helped this person disappear. Either way, this feels like just the start of a sparing between Red and Tamar. Time will tell.

You gotta stop doing that. Tom’s dead.

Ressler’s advice to Liz brings a chuckle to us as it’s advice he can’t seem to take himself. By encouraging her to move on, he’s telling her things he hasn’t come to grips with either. Liz clearly is trying to do that, but a lot is still haunting her and her life is one that’s become paranoid and darker. She’s got an edge about her and could we blame her after all she’s been through?

She’s worked to have her marriage annulled. When asked why she kept his name, she flatly answers:

My husband. He was an imposter. A fake. Keen was never his name.

In that moment, the question in reply “what now?” seems to trigger a bit of a transformation in her Liz. She may well be realizing that she’s turned a page. By adopting the name for herself, she’s forging ahead as someone new.

As the episode closes, we see a more confident and content Liz enter the Post Office sporting a new hairstyle and a seemingly new outlook. We’ll see how long that fresh moment lasts. After all, this is The Blacklist and it would seem no one is happy for long.

Let’s get the job done

When we first see Harold Cooper again, Red and Dembe sit waiting for him in his own home.

Looks so soft. Shea butter?

Red never really stops being Red. The oddities he tosses seem to be distractions, but in all, it seems more as if his attention to detail and passion for every small thing is insatiable. Those would be good qualities in a man that is constantly at odds with most of the world. As it were, they often serve to keep us off guard until he reveals what he really wants.

When are you coming back to work? Things are at a tipping point Harold. Your replacement has the unfortunate distinction of being both untrustworthy and incompetent.

This small scene in the middle of the episode highlights a past between these two that up to know, we didn’t know about. Apparently there was a “little adventure in Kuwait” that Harold would prefer stay hidden, but Red assures him that he’s giving the only copy to Harold not as a threat, but a bribe to get back on his feet.

As the two part ways, Red reveals that he knows what they found at the hospital. He knows about the diagnosis. Harold seems mildly surprised, but for whatever reason this motivates him and at the end of the episode we see Harold enter the Post Office again to the applause of his team upon his return.

This curious little scene begs the question of what past these two share and what medical difficulty lies ahead for Harold? What makes Red feel there’s an urgency to complete what they started? What “job” specifically does Red mean? The Blacklist? Something bigger? Something these two have known about for much longer than we thought? Only time and the writers will tell.

The Final Verdict

The mysteries and duplicities of this show do NOT cease.

If there was any thought we’d have clear answers to all our questions in the first episode back after Season 1 concluded, it was a naïve one. The writing team of Jon Bokenkamp and John Eisendrath for this episode did an astounding job of packing in a lot of groundwork into one opening hour. If anything there was almost too much information to grasp in one viewing, but somehow director Michael Watkins managed to fit it all in—even if it took two views to digest it.

The revelation that Red’s former wife is at the mercy, and apparently the knife, of Berlin is a twist few could have seen coming. As Naomi recounted to Liz how no one really knows how difficult it was to have Red completely upset their life, we in the audience were shaking our heads right along with Liz inside her mind. We’ve all seen the havoc Red brings to everyone he touches.

Through the first viewing of this episode it felt like simply too much to take in, but in subsequent viewings one thing seemed to pop out loud and clear. Almost everyone in this show has a duplicity to them. And Lord Baltimore was the perfect first Blacklister in Season 2 to remind us of that fact.

Every character is wrestling with things they can both see in themselves and things they can’t. Time will tell whose demons can be conquered and whose will consume them.

Questions? There’s almost nothing BUT questions!

• Who is Liz’s mysterious voyeur and what role will that person play?
• What past do Harold and Red share?
• What medical condition does Harold have and did that affect his decision to return?
• Can Liz truly move on with her life? Is there EVER a calm after Red Reddington enters your life? Naomi may be proof that there’s no statute of limitations on trouble Red can bring.
• Can Ressler move past his own demons and heed his own advice?
• It seems clear that Berlin doesn’t want Red to die (yet) but instead wants him to suffer. If Berlin wanted Red killed, it seems he could have a long time ago. Berlin’s plan of revenge seems much more sinister.